Page 12 of Reign

“You certainly have a high opinion of yourself,” he saidcheerfully. “What if I just came out here for a bit of fresh air?”

“You arrived at the party and came straight out here, to the driveway, where I’m sitting alone. That’s not coincidence; that’s stalking.”

“Ahh,” James said in a low, significant tone. “You noticed that I wasn’t at the party earlier. You werelookingfor me.”

“I was trying to avoid you,” she amended, but she wasn’t actually convinced that was the truth.

The sunlight danced over James’s silhouette, glinting on the beer bottles in his hands. Nina lifted an eyebrow.

“You claim you weren’t looking for me, but you havetwobeers,” she couldn’t help observing.

He looked down. “So I do,” he said, as if he’d forgotten that he was holding a bottle in each hand. “They were both for me, but the chivalrous thing to do is share, isn’t it?” He handed one to her and started to leave.

Nina sighed. “You may as well sit down.”

James grinned and sank onto the step next to her, clinking his bottle to hers. Nina bit back a smile. She didn’t want to like him, but he had an irrepressible energy that made it hard not to.

A silence settled around them, punctuated by laughter and the hum of conversation from the backyard, the bass’s low pulse thumping like a heartbeat.

“When I heard about a party at Tudor House, this wasn’t quite what I imagined.” James leaned an elbow on the step above them.

“What did you expect, Elizabethan ruffs and court jesters?”

“At the very least a gabled roof and charming English garden. The only thing Tudor about this place is the number of people crammed into a small space.”

“The party has hours to go. We might still get a banishment or beheading.”

“In that case, I may stick around.” There it was again: that hint of an accent, maddeningly unplaceable.

“I can’t decide where you’re from,” Nina declared. “You don’t sound European.”

“I traveled a lot when I was younger, with my parents. I picked up a hodgepodge accent along the way.”

“So what brought you to King’s College?”

He considered the question with surprising thoughtfulness. “I wanted a change, and this was as much of a change as I could get away with,” he said at last. “My family expects a lot of me. Getting far from home…it’s a way to escape the attention, for a little while, at least.”

That much Nina understood. Her parents were the best, but they were still parents, and could hover too closely over her life.

“If you don’t like attention, why did you audition for the play?” she ventured.

James winked, the moment of seriousness evaporating. “Maybe I auditioned because I heard you were auditioning.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “You said it yourself: we’d never met before the audition.”

Something deepened in his gaze, but it was gone before Nina could fully decipher it. “What about you? Did you come to King’s College to get away from home, too?”

“Hardly. My parents live half a mile from campus.”

James spun the beer bottle on the steps, a restless gesture that reminded Nina of Sam. “You like having them nearby?”

“It’s the best. They give me space to do my own thing at school, but if I need to go home for any reason”—like needing to cry in private because my royal boyfriend broke up with me,Nina thought—“then I can go sleep in my own bed, eat a home-cooked meal. My mom is the only one of us who can cook,” she added. “My mamá can’t make anything but toast, and even that she usually burns. She works at the Ministry of the Treasury.”

“Sounds like you’re very close,” James said quietly, perhaps a bit enviously.

“What about your family? What are they like?”

“Oh, they’re glad I’m here,” he replied, which wasn’t really an answer to her question. “Since you’re an expert, though, Nina, I’d love to hear your advice about King’s College. Anything I should know?”